Maybe, this time
by Coco x
Summary: Lit. Oneshot. A walk through Jess's head. but seeing as it was two in the morning, the world was quiet and he was lonely, he allowed himself to indulge on the part of him he didn’t let anyone see.  Not even her. Rating for language. Read?


This is another Lit fic, of Course! The characters, setting and time frame are intentionally vague. I wanted to leave especially the time frame up to you, the reader. Bit of a different style for me and I hope you like it. Thank you, as always for reading.

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As he lay in the dark listening to the rain gently pelt against his window, his mind replayed in shadowy flashes his memories of her like an old movie reel. Her face flickered in front of him and lingered like a ghost as he began to drift off into a deep and troubled sleep.

_He let her sneak up on him, even though he was acutely aware of her presence from the moment her hand touched the doorknob. He was sitting at a table in the corner hunched over a tired copy of The Great Gatsby (How many times had he read it now?). And yet he still underlined passages and dissected them in the margins. His love for literature had started at an early age, seven or eight, when his mom started dumping him at the public library for the day so she could go to work and God knows where else. When you find yourself stuck in a building filled with books for seven or more hours a day, there aren't a whole lot of options. Eventually you will explore the volumes around you, either out of curiosity or sheer boredom. At first, the words cramped onto the pages before him didn't mean anything; they were merely a slideshow to pass the time. Then, quite suddenly, he realized that he had something in common with these characters that spent the day entertaining him. They were all lost in some way, looking for solace, trying to find themselves against all odds. There were secrets beyond secrets on every page, locked in every word, searching for a way to climb out into the world. He found himself pulling the words apart in hopes of helping his fictional friends escape from their desperate captivity. He learned not to take the language before him for face value- there was always more to be exposed. He, himself, was like a novel in a lot of ways. What he said was always what he meant, but there was always a little more to it. He piled sarcasm, apathy and angst on his exterior to cover his motives, desires and drives. The only problem was that with him, there was no reader willing to analyze his use of rhetoric and grammar, to pull him apart for symbolism, syntax and theme._

_There was nobody to fill up the margins of his pages._

_That is, not until her._

_He felt her approaching and braced himself against the pull in his muscles that involuntarily appeared when she did what he knew she was about to do. Her hand made contact with the dead center of his back and lightly smoothed up his spine until her fingers reached the back of his neck and swept over his skin. From this swift movement, she wrapped her arms around his neck from behind him and rested her chin on his left shoulder._

_"Hey," she said softly, close to his ear._

_"Hello," he replied, closing the book before him. He never bothered to mark the page he left off on. His memory had always been sharp enough to recall the precise point where he stopped reading._

_"You smell like books. Did you go to the library without me?" She asked. He turned on the stool to face her and she released her grasp on his neck._

_"What exactly do books smell like?" He asked, fighting the smile that was pulling at the corners of his mouth. In truth, he knew exactly what she meant, he just wanted to hear her say it._

_"You know, like old leather and stale tea and dry leaves. If they could bottle that shit up into cologne, I'd be so easy for any guy who wore that."_

_"Well I guess I better hope that there isn't much of a market for smelling like dead plants and dust, huh?"_

_She stepped forward to sit on his knee and wrapped her arms around his neck. He slipped his hands around her waist and looked into her face._

_"No worries. You already smell like that, only better," she said. He was probably the only person in the world that would take that as a compliment. She curled her neck to lay her head on his shoulder. Her breath warmed his neck and he tightened his hold around her figure, feeling himself break somewhere inside._

He awoke with a start and momentarily forgot where he was. He grappled in the dark to cling to his memory of her that had so vividly replayed itself through his dream. He gave himself a headache trying to hold on to the warmth of her next to him, the softness of her skin, the light fragrance in her hair. Outside, the torrential downpours had reduced to a mere drizzle. He sat up in his bed, leaning back on his fists to support himself. He yawned the grogginess out of his head and swung his legs over the side of the bed. He pulled on a black hooded sweatshirt and a pair of faded jeans and shoved his feet into his sneakers without bothering to untie the laces. Like a shadow, he slipped out of the apartment and effortlessly hopped the banister to the staircase, all without making a noise. As he stepped into the misty night, he zipped up his sweatshirt and pulled his hood down a little further over his forehead. He walked in the middle of the street, his hands jammed in his pockets, listening to the water droplets trickling off of the eaves and hop scotching down through the leaves of the giant oaks that the town had been built around. The pavement was glistening and soft with moisture. For some reason he wasn't quite sure of, the sight of wet pavement always made him nostalgic. Perhaps it was the closet romanticism he hid so well in himself; Rain-soaked highway, concrete rose clichés usually got on his nerves, but seeing as it was two in the morning, the world was quiet and he was lonely, he allowed himself to indulge on the part of him he didn't let anyone see.

Not even her.

_He lay next to her in the grass telling her things she didn't want to hear without ever uttering a word and watching her slip further and further away. He couldn't understand why he always challenged her when everything was perfect, why he pushed her just to see if she would fall down. It was a risky game, he knew that. In the back of his mind he was aware that no matter how many times she let him get away with it, someday he would turn around and she wouldn't be there anymore. In his own twisted thought process though, he didn't have any other choice. He had to push her away because, if he didn't, he would inevitably slip and she would be able to see everything, see all the things he hid. He knew he wasn't good enough for her and if she saw that she would be gone in a broken heartbeat and never look back. So he kept a cautious distance between them in spite of the fact that a part of him wanted to just pull her into him, rip off all his skin and bear the scars underneath._

_"I love you," she said in that voice of hers. When she spoke her tone was always soft and low, but never weak. She was so sure of every word that came out of her mouth that there was never any need to raise the volume of her voice, not even in the most intense of situations._

_"I love you."_

_"It's probably better if you don't," he replied without looking at her. He was lying on his back looking up at the graying sky of dusk. She was sitting beside him, her legs curled to the side, leaning on her left hand. She was silent for a full, pulsing minute before gracefully rising and brushing the blades of grass off of her jeans as she walked away. He sat up and watched her go, his insides churning. He started to call her name but stopped himself. What if he hadn't? Would it have mattered?_

How long ago had all this happened?

A month?

A week?

A day?

_Or is it a year? _He thought as he made his stance in the street dead in front of her house. How much time passed, he could not tell, but in the duration a novel's worth of regrets flew through him and were hurdled toward her bedroom window. He felt cold all over. He looked down and realized that his hands were shaking. What the hell was he doing here? Outside her house in the middle of the friking night, and was it raining now? He must be crazy. Out of his god-forsaken mind. He brought both hands to his face and covered his eyes.

Breathe. Relax. Go the fuck home.

You're dreaming. You're sleepwalking. You're dead.

He moved his hands over his ears and dug his non-existent fingernails into his hair, his head, his skin, his brain. He was tired again. The rain had restarted, lightly as it were, but if he stood there long enough he would get soaked through. He sighed and felt his internal organs shudder. He slowly raised his eyes from the moist blackness around him to the moon white glow of the house before him. She was standing on the porch directly in line with his position, staring at him. Her face wasn't angry or surprised or confused. She was beautifully calm, almost like it wasn't the least bit odd for him to be standing there. He closed his eyes for a long moment and wiped his thoughts clean. He reopened them. She wasn't an apparition. It was her.

She was wearing gray sweatpants and a long sleeved red shirt. Her hair was in a loose, stylishly messy ponytail and her feet were bare. Her toes curled slightly over the edge of the steps and her arms were hanging at her sides. Neither one of them spoke nor moved for several minutes, but a hundred thousand thoughts and emotions managed to bridge the gap between them and magnetized the air.

At precisely the exact moment that he took a step forward, she moved down one stair.

It was two in the morning, the world was quiet and he was lonely. The vulnerability, nostalgia and quiet romanticism that had shown its face in his solitude lay before her like a fresh manuscript. He made no attempt to quickly gather up all the pieces and stuff them back under his jacket, in his pockets, his shoes. No author can lament the lack of enthusiasm for their latest work if they refuse to let anyone read it. And here before him was his most ready and willing reader with a fresh ballpoint pen in her hand to fill the white margins with meaning.

Maybe, this time…

If he could just let her in. Hand himself over without being afraid for once. For once, if he could only let someone free _him_ from his captivity: The self-mutilating torture and refusal to accept love that he cloaked with his monosyllabic retorts and street smart rough demeanor. If he could do that, maybe all the shit he had gone through would be worth it. Maybe he would even gain some clarity and come to find that everything happened for a reason. Maybe.

But maybe not...but maybe. A chance. Like everything else.

And abandoning any spare doubt or inhibition, he made his way across the dewy grass and closed the miles of unread pages between them.


End file.
